"That is because they come so naturally to you," she explained. "You are happy because your life is spent in making other people happy. That is the lesson I learned."
"You were doing that long before I met you, and you are doing it now."
"No," she insisted; "it may have seemed so to you, but I was really trying to find happiness for myself, and because I was thinking of myself it didn't come. Since I returned home I've tried your plan, and so far it has worked splendidly."
"But the supreme test," Huntington asked,—"what is that to be?"
"Oh, I don't know," she answered with an effort to speak indifferently; "being a girl I suppose it will be my marriage."
"That should be the supreme triumph of your happiness rather than the test."
"I used to think so but I've changed my mind. I had a vision once of what I thought marriage ought to be.—We spoke of it in Bermuda, and you made fun of it, don't you remember? I'm convinced now that it was all wrong."
"You said that you would marry only a man who would let you contribute your share to the real life which you would jointly live."
"Yes," Merry answered consciously; "and you laughed at me! But you were right. I ought not to think so much of myself." She paused a moment. "The man I really loved probably wouldn't care for me at all," she continued soberly, her eyes averted. "If I am convinced that I can make the man I marry happy, then I am more certain of finding happiness myself. That is making a tremendous compromise with sentiment, but don't you think it more sensible, after all?"
"Then the supreme test, as I understand it, would be to marry a man you thought you could make happy whether you cared for him or not?"